


Father to Son: The First Lesson

by Lys ap Adin (lysapadin)



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-09-30
Updated: 2002-09-30
Packaged: 2017-10-02 05:00:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lysapadin/pseuds/Lys%20ap%20Adin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Lucius sends his son to school, he gives him his first lesson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Father to Son: The First Lesson

**Author's Note:**

> Poetry. Originally September 2002.

**Father to Son: The First Lesson**

There is a pattern to it,  
the ebb and flow of time's tide:  
The rise of power  
glittering, alluring--  
Expectations--a burden--  
our honor demands adherence  
to the patterns of the past.  
These are rules set in stone.  
We may not disobey  
the patterns to which we have bred ourselves.

Do you understand?

The snake may shed its skin   
but only sloughs off dead and dimmed scales-  
is renewed--the new supplants the old--  
but nothing changes between generations.  
The pattern remains the same.

Power waxes--weaves a dance  
hypnotic;  
We stare into eyes that stare back.  
A fundamental: we are the ones who quail--  
and we bow--  
we who bow to no other, save when it suits us--  
bow to this absolute of our past.  
Inevitable, our fascination with power.  
It is the venom in our blood  
that we are, and ever have been, sycophants of the truly great.

See now.  
They will tell you of choices,   
of places where the pattern breaks  
and fails to hold true--  
of chinks in the armor,  
and that tradition is only a word.

They will lie to you.

Truth winds us in its coils.  
There is no escape--and I looked,  
but vision is lacking in our blood.  
I see the old questions in you, boy--  
They are unanswerable. Learn this:  
It is the most important thing.

We are held.  
It has invariably been so for us--  
So do as those before you have done.  
Forget the whispers of regret  
like the rasp of scales over stone.

Do you understand?


End file.
